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Thu, 24 May 2018 15:22:40 -0400Joomla! - Open Source Content Managementen-gbPutting Out of Your Mindhttp://www.secretinthedirt.com/index.php/dirt-blogs/entry/putting-out-of-your-mind
http://www.secretinthedirt.com/index.php/dirt-blogs/entry/putting-out-of-your-mind“You have to feel you are a great putter in order to be one.”

-Lee Trevino

Anyone can putt.

No one needs to be especially gifted to putt the ball across a well mowed green. Yet some people stand out among the rest as “great putters”, while other fall behind. Why would this be?

I finished reading “Putting out of Your Mind” by Bob Rotella in search of the answer to that question. Rotella is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on the mental side of golf, boasting clients like Padraig Harrington, Henrik Stenson, and David Duval to name a few.

I want to make this a two part review, as this is an area of the game I’ve studied a lot, and I don’t think a book like that covers it all. First I'll lay some ground work, then relate the book back to what I've learned before the book.

Background

I can say with complete honesty that I have probably read just as many books about the mental side of the game as I have about the swing… books on psychology, visualization, performance, quantum particles and everything in between, totaling about 25 at this point, but who’s counting ?? I don’t mention this to impress anyone but to simply to lay down the fact that the subject matter is not new to me, and I certainly have my opinions about the mental side of the game. It’s real, tangible, and can make or break your game, no matter what you believe.

John Demartini

My personal favorite philosopher/mental coach is John Demartini, who has read over 28,000 books on all kinds of disciplines, looking for the common thread between them. I respect his reputation, as he’s coached athletes, actors, business executives, entrepreneurs, and thousands more. He’s a great example of a guy who lives the way he tells other to live. He writes that we are always, 100% of the time, acting in terms of the true values that we hold. There is no escaping it.

Life is a lot like golf. In golf, we always allocate our practice time according to what we truly find most important (not what we tell people is most important – How many times have you met a golf teacher who tells you to practice putting more, yet doesn’t do it himself?). For many people it may look like this, in order of descending importance:

1.Long Irons

2.Driving

3.Middle Irons

4.Short Irons

5.Wedges

6.Chipping/Sand

7.Putting

For items high on our list, we have order and discipline (buying new irons, subscribing to new methods, tweaking lies and lofts, buying the new driver on the market, going on forums). On the other end of the spectrum, we need outside motivation to make us practice. Ever wonder why many PGA tour pros have different coaches for different parts of their game? If they didn’t, many of them wouldn’t practice on their weaknesses! For many of us, including myself at times, putting has been on the bottom of my list. There’s never enough time to putt, yet always enough time to hit drives. Hmm…

So how does one fix that? It would be find of me to sit here and say, “go practice putting more”, but if you don’t find it truly important at your core, you’re just not going to make it a priority in the long run. A week will go by and it’s “How do I get 5 more yards on my drives?”

In all of the putting and mental books I’ve read, they’ve failed to mention the fact that the reason people don’t practice their putting is because maybe there are unseen BENEFITS you experience in being a bad putter. Allow me to explain; anytime your subconscious sees more positives than negatives, it starts to create a habit. You may be thinking to yourself, “how can there be any benefits to bad putting? It’s so important that it can only help your game..” Again, this is not something in your conscious awareness… these are really your unconscious motives at work. And golf is not always about the game. It’s about your surroundings, values, friends, beliefs, and attitudes about life.

I can think of 10 benefits to NOT being a good putter right off the top of my head:

1. If practice putting for a long time, your back will hurt

2. If you get really good at putting and consistently beat all of your friends, maybe they won’t want to play with you anymore

3. Putting is the least masculine part of the game. Why practice it when I could be hitting 3 irons with my buddies?

4. If people see I’m a bad putter, but I have a low handicap, they’ll know I must be a good ball striker. That’s more important to me.

5. Ben Hogan and Moe Norman, the two greatest ball strikers of all time, were not known as the greatest putters, so it’s ok for me to be mediocre at putting. I’ll just make up for it with great ball striking.

7. If my handicap was lower, I would have to play with “THOSE” guys/girls in the A flight. I don’t want to play with them.

8. Let me just try the new method of improving ball striking, [Insert method here], and after I see if that works, I’ll focus more on putting.

9. Next week I’m going to go look at new putters. After I get one, then I’ll practice with that putter. There’s no point to practicing with a putter I’m not going to use next week.

10. When you win as a tour pro, people want to have press conferences, interviews, film commercials, sign deals, talk with you, get autographs, ask for your advice, and a million other things. Middle of the pack putting allows some players to chug along at their own pace, make some money on the tour, but avoid the hassle that comes with a win and move on to the next tour stop. When you’re dealing with 7 million dollar purses, winning isn’t everything to some people.

The Subconscious

Like I said, these thoughts are going on below the surface. I once read that only 1-2% of the information you take in and perceive is on the conscious level. The other 98% is unconscious.

It would make sense, then, that most of the true ideas running the show have not been brought to the surface yet, since they are acting upon your reality from your subconscious.

The fact is that Golf has a balance to it all the time. When you focus on a low priority in your game, you’ll get better at it while simultaneously getting worse at something else. That’s just golf.

Golf isn’t just good or bad. It’s both.

Here’s how it may look now in your game:

Long Game Short Game

+ -

In the diagram above, the long game feels more important to you, and more a part of your image as a golfer, while the short game is not as important. That’s ok, because there’s always a balance. There’s nothing wrong with that.

So how do we get putting to be a top priority? Well, what are the benefits of great putting?

1. More money won in tournaments and from my friends. Who cares what they think?

2. You can save par and get up and down on par 5’s more often

3. Since you can make par from the junk, you can let your driver rip on more holes

4. Since you can make par from the junk, you can fire straight at pins with your 4 iron on long par 3’s, instead of shying away from the pin

5. At many clubs, you can win scrip money by playing well in tournaments. This will allow you to get those new clubs for free, rather than spending a lot of your own money.

6. You can beat the boss in golf if he invites you out (or beat your subordinates if you’re the boss)

7. You can play well in the company scramble coming up this summer.

8. If you decide to join a country club for the networking benefits, the current members will want to play with you.

9. You can finally break 100,90,80,70, or 60… without working on your swing.

10. You’ll save $400 on every new driver that comes out, and still beat the one who goes out to buy it.

11. You can impress new clients you want for your business.

12. You can trade your golf knowledge for other services.

13. Winning at the highest levels comes with its own share of battles, but the more wins you rack up, the more of a legacy you can leave to those behind you. Hall of Fames (local and national), club championships, tournament wins, trophies, all add up to a feeling of gratitude when looking back at all the hard work it took to get there. You may even be able to pass the knowledge on to your kids or to the public in the form of a book or video.

(You may have your own benefits to being a good putter.. feel free to write them down in a notebook to refer back to)

In my opinion, what happens to improve your putting and get your game in balance is the following:

Golf Life/Gratitude

+ -

Instead of thinking only in terms of your golfing game, let’s balance out our entire golf game with our life on the other side. On one side we have the golfer who has discovered the true importance to being good at the short game AND the long game, while on the other side we have life.

Anytime we put ourselves on a pedestal, someone else or something else will put you in the pit just to balance you out. Ever hit a drive in the middle of the fairway, get a little confident about your game, only to top it from the fairway? Perfect example. That’s just how the universe (and golf) seems to work. It will always be like that.

Instead of waiting for life to happen, go out and find some place to “lose” somewhere else. I once had a conversation about this exact thing with Ken Graham, a chiropractor and philosopher out of San Diego. He said that any time he’s feeling cocky, he just calls up an 80 year old friend of his who’s a crack racquetball player. Even though his friend is 80 while Ken’s in his late 40s, he can work his butt up and down the court. Ken told me this keeps his chiropractic business in perspective, and keeps him centered and humbled.

Now I’m not saying “go play racquetball with someone who can beat you”, but go try something new, read a new type of book, sing with the windows down in your car, embarrass yourself every once in a while. When you come back to the course, all of the sudden sweating over a 10 foot putt doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Many mental books just say, “stick to your routine and trust your instincts,” yet we put pressure on each putt anyway. In my opinion, perspective allows you to “let go” and trust your instincts – when you have the bigger picture in perspective, who really cares about a 10 foot putt? Every putt has a chance to go in. You can strike every one of them with the knowledge that the outcome won’t affect who you are as a person. Rotella touches on that idea a little bit in the book, and I think he’s right.

Our Thoughts and The Putter’s Creed

I love the story about how Bobby Jones called his putter “Calamity Jane”, and took the idea one step further. I think that we can become disconnected from the equipment that we use. If there is even 1% of doubt in what we are trying to do, you're not going to be 100% effective. Corey Pavin has had the same putter for how many years?

Who absolutely has to trust his equipment 100%, all of the time? The Military. There is a rifle’s creed that they must learn and live by. I’ve pasted the first part of it below:

“This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will...”

“This is my putter. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My putter is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My putter, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must roll my putter true. I must make more putts than my opponent who is trying to beat me. I must make putts before he beats me. I will..”

While although you may be thinking to yourself, “That's great, but how will this actually improve my putting?" There is a ton of evidence to suggest that are thoughts have an effect on what we are observing. In other words, the mere fact that you think you love your putter actually improves the way it performs.

In the video below, there was a bottle of water that received a blessing from a buddhist monk, and it changed the water on a molecular level. A bit "out there" for most people I know, but isn't it interesting how the military takes the relationship that each soldier has with his/her gun so seriously, and so many famous golfers have had "intimate" relationships with their putters? It was Vijay Singh during his $9 million season who said to his caddy over and over "I am the best putter in the world."